The Water Castle by Megan Frazer Blakemore

I know I am always telling people not to judge books by their covers, but I am certainly guilty of this infraction from time to time. Somehow, I saw the cover of this book and thought it would be more fantastic than it was. Maybe it was the banner that says “Believe in the unbelievable…” Maybe it was the castle in the background. But, somehow, I had my mind set that those kids would be involved in mystical time travel. Yeah… Not so much! Although, there were chapters that took readers back to the early 1900s to discover the history of the Water Castle and the ancestors of the main characters, those main characters most definitely did not travel through time themselves. And that was OK. Even though this story wasn’t what I thought it would be, I still thought it was extremely cool.

Ephraim Appledore-Smith’s family relocated to Crystal Springs, Maine, after his father had a stroke. Though his mother had inherited the house quite some time ago, Ephraim and his siblings had never been there before. His mother decided to move to Crystal Springs because she had hopes that a specialist who lived in that area would be able to help her husband with his recovery. After their arrival, though, Ephraim became obsessed with the possibility that the local water had special, mystical properties and that he could use it to cure his father. After all, that was how the “Water Castle” came to be in the first place; his ancestor, Orlando Appledore, built the house because he was convinced that the Fountain of Youth was in Crystal Springs. After floundering to find his niche in the new town/school, Ephraim became part of an unlikely trio — with Mallory Green, whose family has always worked as caretakers of the Appledore property, and Will Wylie, whose family has long feuded with the Appledores. First brought together by a polar explorers research project, the three banded together with a determination to find the fountain of youth themselves.